


The Choices We Made

by terrible_titles



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Pre-Canon, Spoilers through Season Three, the author has Feelings about Timothy Stoker, the friendship that could have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terrible_titles/pseuds/terrible_titles
Summary: Jon and Tim walk home together shortly after Jon receives his promotion, and Tim wonders what it will mean for all of them.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	The Choices We Made

It’s a cold night, and Jon clutches his coat tighter to himself when Tim holds open the door and coaxes Jon out from the warmth of the pub. It’s dark but not too late—it’s a Wednesday, after all, and they have work in the morning. People are gathered in groups of twos and threes on the street, flickering in and out of the lights from restaurants and lamps. Tim nestles his chin into a burgundy scarf and shivers as he claps his hands together. 

“Going my way?” Tim teases. They don’t live far from each other, and it’s common for them to walk back together after a night out with the group. Sasha and Martin have already departed in the other direction, after Sasha got a little too tipsy and Martin insisted on escorting her home. “New medicine,” she had admitted. “Lowers my tolerance.” Jon didn’t press any further, but they all knew. She was a good researcher, and good researching at the Institute was not healthy for anyone. 

Jon nods at Tim and they head off. It’s not a very long walk, but the chill is seeping straight into Jon’s bones. Tim tosses him a side glance and begins chattering about something or other—a date he has planned for Friday with a man who doesn’t like movies or live theatre or bars or really anything at all, it seems. 

“Cook for him at home,” Jon suggests, a bit distantly. “You make… pasta, right?” He thought he remembered Tim mentioning he had made gnocchi or fettucine from scratch. A conversation that might have taken place a while ago, or tonight—Jon’s memory was fuzzy. 

“Too forward for a first date,” Tim says, raising an eyebrow. “Inviting him back to my house already, Jon? Really. I hardly know the guy.” 

Jon feels himself flush. He doesn’t have any idea what the rules are for these situations. “Museum, then.”

“Mmm,” Tim answers, non-committedly. Then, suddenly— “Feels a bit weird, doesn’t it? Talking like this? Now that you’re my boss.” 

Jon has nearly forgotten. Wednesdays were pub days in the office. That, and any time they had a case that kept them over. But maybe he shouldn’t have come tonight now that he is Head Archivist. He had simply assumed. Perhaps he is overstepping by going along like they always had.

“A bit, yes,” Jon murmurs finally, because he can’t decide what else to say to that. 

They turn the corner into a park they normally cut through, but Tim, with his longer legs, heads them both off and starts on the longer route. Jon would have liked to be in out of the cold sooner, but he doesn’t protest. “Should I not have brought it up?” Tim asks, and Jon doesn’t know if he’s referring to Jon’s promotion or Tim’s date. 

“You should feel free to speak about whatever is on your mind, Tim,” Jon says. He would really like to know, he finds suddenly, what is on Tim’s mind. More than what seems healthy. 

Tim exhales, and a puff of steam surrounds his face. They are out of the crowds now, and the only ones walking this way—the park to their left, the back alleys from stores on their right. Jon thinks about a statement he had read this morning, a cold night like this. He finds himself gazing down a dark alleyway, looking for something. 

Jon never sees Tim nervous, but this is close. “I do enjoy our walks,” Tim says finally. Jon wrestles his gaze away from the dark, finds himself looking up at Tim’s profile, his long aquiline nose and determined mouth. Dark eyes. “I hope things don’t change much.” 

“I can’t see why they would,” Jon insists. 

Tim’s mouth tilts up in a half-smile. Tim doesn’t usually smile unless he’s a bit upset. “You wouldn’t,” he says. 

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” 

Another breath, another puff like smoke in the night air. It lingers, a blemish in the clear dark. Jon might reach out to touch it, like it was a substantial thing.

Instead, Jon breathes into his own gloves, tries to warm his numb fingers. 

“Well, Jon,” Tim says, “the thing is, I like you and Sasha and even Martin, poor kid. I like going out for a drink with you after work. I like poking fun at Martin and freaking him out with the thought he has friends. I like how Sasha picks ridiculous arguments over inconsequential things. I like…” He stops, and Jon holds his breath. His smile disappears. “I like you.”

Jon has never been good at being liked. He has barely been tolerated for most of his life, and he finds he functions best that way. He doesn’t know when he started to think of Sasha and Tim as friends, when he started allowing Martin to bring him tea without even needing to bite back an irritating comment about it. 

Proper spooky, the way they all fell gently into each other’s lives. He shivers. 

“I thought you and Sasha—” Jon begins, but Tim shakes his head. 

“That was a one-time thing,” he says. “We both agreed it was a mistake. She’s just not the type to hold grudges.” 

Sasha had bought Tim a drink this evening, placed it in front of him with an arched eyebrow and a smile—not a Tim smile, but a proper one. Tim grabbed up the mug and scooted over so Sasha could sit by him, one arm slung over her shoulders as she coaxed Martin into an argument about the origins of Darjeeling or some such nonsense. 

Jon understands that he will never understand, but he wants to. He wants to know. 

He’s felt itchy ever since he finished recording the statement from this morning. The numbing cold night air, the way Tim is acting both strange and very much normal, is catching like a thread in his throat. He’s trying to put the pieces together. Trying to find the fulcrum, the point at which all their relationships mingle and intertwine into something nebulous and dangerous. 

“God, it’s freezing,” Tim says, and claps his gloved hands together. Jon recognizes they’ve stopped in front of Tim’s flat. The building’s façade is nothing unusual, but it has a dark mystery to it tonight, something Jon recognizes and can’t place. “Want to pop in for a warm-up before you go the rest of the way?” 

It’s really not as long as all that to Jon’s place—another five, ten minutes. 

Jon frowns. “What are you really asking, Tim?”

Tim looks away. “Lost my chance, then, eh, Jon?” He looks back. 

What chance. _What chance._

“I don’t—” Jon feels the start of a stammering mess coming and closes his eyes, inhales. “Me—this—us—nothing has to—we don’t have to change it, if we don’t want to.” 

“What makes you think we’ll have a choice?” There’s something sharp that flashes in Tim’s dark eyes, something like a shard of light, the echo of a fiery heat turned icy and dormant. “We’ve all got our places to go. You’ve taken a step, just—well, it’s not towards me, is it?”

There’s something lurking in Jon’s mind, a tether between them, and he’s falling—or Tim’s falling—and the rope is fraying—and he knows, Jon knows, Tim is the type to cut him free. He clenches fists inside gloves, barely feeling the fingers. 

He thinks of Sasha, and her new medicine. He thinks of Martin, and his tea. 

He thinks of Tim, and then the taller man claps Jon on the shoulder. 

“Better get home if you’re not coming up, then.” He smiles. “ _Boss._ ” 

Jon watches as Tim backs up to the side door for the stairwell. Tim doesn’t stop smiling. Jon doesn’t stop watching. 

Jon doesn’t know what regret is, really, until he tastes it sour in his mouth months later in a hospital bed after Tim dies, refusing to forgive Jon, and he wonders if it all started there, if Tim managed to know something Jon didn’t that cold winter night. If every choice Jon was going to make had been laid out in front of him, and Tim saw it all, the monster Jon would become, how he’d come to hate Jon. How he’d destroy himself and leave the mess of their relationship forever unfixed. 

Jon doesn’t cry. He doesn’t feel anything, to tell the truth. Just wants to know _(to Know)_ : If he’d gone up, if he’d accepted Tim’s invite, would that have made anything different?

Or did Tim know all along the paths they were on were irrevocable? After all, _“What makes you think we’ll have a choice?”_

Jon’s fingers are numb. Sasha is dead. Martin—god, what he has done to Martin. And Jon. 

Jon is the Archivist.


End file.
